Abstract
This study quantitatively investigated the relationship between climate change (proxied by CO2 emissions), air pollution (proxied by PM2.5 concentration levels and PM10 and SO2 emissions), and tourism flows (proxied by inbound and domestic tourist arrivals) using panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2017. The results demonstrate a long-term equilibrium relationship between CO2 emissions, air pollution variables, and tourism flows (including the number of inbound and domestic tourists). The panel data model results show that CO2 emissions have an opposite effect on inbound and domestic tourist arrivals, while domestic and inbound tourists positively affect CO2 emissions. PM2.5 level and PM10 and SO2 emissions all have a negative effect on the number of tourists. There is bidirectional causality between CO2 emissions and domestic tourist arrivals, which means CO2 emissions and domestic tourist arrivals have a two-way effect. A one-way causality running from PM2.5 to inbound tourist arrivals and SO2 emissions to domestic tourist arrivals was found. Moreover, we also found bidirectional causality between PM10 and inbound tourist arrivals and PM10 and domestic tourist arrivals. Variance decomposition function results suggest that PM10 and SO2 emissions have stronger effects on inbound tourist arrivals in the long term, while CO2 emissions and PM10 have stronger power in explaining innovations in domestic tourist arrivals. The movements in the domestic tourist arrivals do significantly affect CO2 emissions in the long run. The study provides theoretical implications and guidance for achieving a healthy and sustainable tourism industry.
Highlights
IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
In the case of domestic tourist arrivals, at the ten-year forecasting horizon, PM10, CO2 emissions, SO2, and PM2.5 explain 5.93%, 3.99%, 0.66%, and 0.21% of domestic tourist arrivals, respectively. These results suggest that PM10 and SO2 emissions have stronger effects on inbound tourist arrivals in the long term, while CO2 emissions and PM10 have stronger power in explaining innovations in domestic tourist arrivals
This study quantitatively investigated the relationship between CO2 emissions, air pollution (PM2.5 concentration levels, PM10, and SO2 emissions), and tourism flows using panel data for 30 Chinese provinces from 2010 to 2017
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Global tourism has witnessed significant growth over the past decades, especially in. According to the China Statistical Yearbook published by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, since the 1980s, China’s tourism industry has experienced tremendous growth, with inbound tourists increasing from 1.81 million in 1978 to 139.78 million in 2017, making. China one of the world’s largest host countries for inbound tourism [1]. Tourism has become one of the strongest and largest industries internationally and is regarded as an engine of economic development [2,3]. A growing body of literature has explored various factors that influence the attraction of tourists, such as extreme weather events [4], tourist security [5,6], and government policies [2]
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